NEW YORK
Dan Barber emerges one recent afternoon from the Union Square Greenmarket with a spring bounty: asparagus, purple kohlrabi, ramps, fiddlehead ferns and dandelion greens.
They're luscious, fresher-than-fresh and Barber can't wait to get them into the kitchen. When he does, what will he do with them? The answer is pure Dan Barber.
"Not a lot," he said with a smile. "As I get better and better as a chef, I'm doing less and less."
Doing less is a hallmark of Barber, 39, who's emerged as a leading figure in the farm-to-table movement, championing local, delicious ingredients and responsible agriculture.
His two New York restaurants -- Blue Hill New York in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns some 30 miles north of the city in Pocantico Hills (www.bluehillfarm.com) -- have become beacons for foodies eager to dig into his clean, often playful dishes, such as a farm-fresh egg served over local mushrooms and greens, surrounded by caramelized pieces of gooey, crispy-skinned chicken wings.
This month, Barber won the James Beard Award as the nation's top chef and made his debut on Time magazine's 100 World's Most Influential People, alongside Ted Turner, George Clooney and Michelle Obama.
Such praise would surely make a chef's narcissism rise like a souffle. But though Barber confesses to a healthy ego, he feels he's merely become a figurehead for a movement that's become mainstream.
"As a chef, if you are chasing after flavorful food, which is what chefs should be doing, you are by definition an environmentalist and you are by definition a nutritionist," he said. "And you are by definition a kind of activist."
The food-to-table philosophy traces its roots to such pioneer chefs as Alice Waters in the 1970s and has been popularized by such writers as Michael Pollan and such chefs as recent Beard winner Rick Bayless.
"I'm just kind of riding the wave," Barber said. "You'd think, I've arrived. But, in fact, if anything, I feel like I've crashed a party."
His Pocantico Hills restaurant is nestled in an 80-acre livestock farm that grows and raises much of the food served on the premises.
The Stone Barns land, donated by the Rockefeller family, includes a 23,000-square-foot greenhouse and 22 acres of pasture land where the animals graze on grass. The organic farm produces hundreds of varieties of vegetables -- 35 types of lettuce alone. It even has a bee colony.
Stone Barn's self-sufficiency varies by season, but by late summer it produces 80 percent of the menus at his restaurants. Exceptions are deliveries of fish, citrus that doesn't grow easily in the Northeast, and some crops that are hard to grow organically.
Barber makes sure to let diners know how their meal began. His waitstaff -- who highlight the origins of a dish-- play a key link between the farmer and the customer.
"If people have not just great-tasting food, but great-tasting food with some type of connection -- who was growing it, how it was grown, where it came from -- they end up tasting things they otherwise wouldn't taste," he said. "Even on my best nights as a chef, the stories provide a kind of seasoning that I can't provide."
Eve Felder, an associate dean at The Culinary Institute of America and a former chef at Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Cafe, is a Barber fan, admiring both his food and his commitment.
"To do that type of local growing within a small radius, particularly in a climate that is four seasons, is not easy," she says. "His recognition is due and I think we will see more people who are committed to local, sustainable food."
Barber likes to say that the farmer determines the menu, and he's not entirely kidding: In the upstate restaurant, the menu is just a list of ingredients pulled from the earth that morning and diners are encouraged to let the cooks combine them.
"If you come into the restaurant tonight and you don't like asparagus, you're cooked," he said. "You're getting asparagus."
And if the customer doesn't like asparagus?
"Come back at another season," he replied.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement